COLD NIGHT
We're waiting for a storm to come in sometime tomorrow. We've had low temperatures and 30-40 mph winds today, according to the weather report. Most of the day here at the pond the wind blew for sure - at least 40 mph, I bet - and the thermometer stayed around 9 degrees until the sun went down. The wind went down with the sun, and thus the temperature dropped - now it's about 2 above. It'll be below zero before morning.

While Fred was stacking wood today, I did my usual winter-proofing - covering the small basement windows, which are only single-paned glass, with insulation board and closing the curtains over them. I think it helps - and even if it doesn't, it makes me feel warmer. Besides that, it's always such joy to take off the insulation and open up the windows in the spring! Like opening a Christmas package.

I have a "thing" about making the house tighter when the thermometer plummets. When I was a kid, we always put the storm windows on in the fall, and "banked" the house with evergreen boughs, sawdust or hay packed against the foundation. Rooms that were seldom used were closed off for the winter and by December going into one of those rooms was akin to being outside. Bedrooms never had heat unless there was a stovepipe or a chimney coming from the floor below.

I remember some of our neighbors stuffing newspaper around windows. Without the newspaper, snow would sift into the house in little piles. Houses didn't have insulation. It wasn't uncommon at the one-room school I attended on Cabot Plain for the teacher to move all of us away from the big windows so the snow wouldn't blow in on our books and papers. We spent some of those cold days sitting at our desks with our coats and boots on. When it got really cold we would do exercises. We'd wave our arms, jump up and down, march to music - anything to get us moving. And we'd sing. Got our minds off being cold, I suppose, although I don't remember anyone complaining or being terribly uncomfortable. It was just the way things were. By late afternoon the classroom would be quite comfortable, our mittens and boots dried and warm, ready for us to head for home in the cold.

The school in West Danville was no better. I went there for my fifth and sixth grades. My mother was the teacher. That school had two rooms. Grades 1-4 were on the ground floor and grades 5-8 were upstairs. Both schools were heated with wood, and often the hot-air ducts would belch smoke instead of heat. I don't know why - a back draft, I suppose. About the only warm place was in the basement where the furnace was. School was almost never closed due to the weather. Most of the kids walked to school, bundled up so they could barely see from behind heavy woolen scarves, white with frost from warm breath. We all wore longjohns. The girls pulled long brown stockings over the long underwear that bunched up and looked awful, and we had to tuck our skirts as neatly as possible into our heavy woolen snowsuits before we went outside. Some of the girls used jar rubbers to hold their stockings up. I wore a sort of harness thing of elastic with four garters attached. More often than I like to remember the elastic would break, usually with a loud "twang" and there would be lots of snickers and laughter - most embarrassing. We sometimes wore wool socks over our shoes before we put on our overshoes to help keep our feet warm. And always at least two pairs of home-knit mittens. Our outfits were topped off with a wool toque, sometimes earmuffs, and a scarf. We all had to carry lunch pails, but I don't remember being further burdened with books or homework. We were luckier than kids today, I guess.

So, tightening up the house when cold weather comes is just something I have to do. I always feel as if I'm saving on heat, but even more important, it brings back wonderful memories.